Elections

Is Rolfing returning to council chambers next week to defend his stupid election rule?

The rumor from city hall moles is that former councilor Tex Golfing (Rex Rolfing) will be returning to Carnegie to defend his stupid runoff rule. I wonder if he will bring his T-Bone gavel and hammer the gavel puck until it flys thru the air again? What a guy. I encourage anyone testifying to change the rule back to 34% plurality to wear an outrageous, loud, large hats, Rolfing loves hats at public input!

You know where I stand, simple plurality should be enough, and 34% is fine with me. There are some other points;

• While in a general election where no candidate in a particular race gets 50+1 normally the candidate who gets the most votes in the general gets fewer votes in the runoff because the turnout is lower. So how is getting a lower percentage of votes but a higher number of votes in the general any different then getting fewer votes in the runoff but a higher percentage? It’s an exercise in insanity, and it costs us (even though I never have liked the argument of cost savings when it comes to elections, doesn’t matter).

• Councilors Spellerberg and Sigette got ZERO votes (0%) and they are sitting on the dais. Why? Because they filled out the paperwork and followed the rules and protocol. So are they unqualified since NO ONE voted for them? Not at all. They did the work, doesn’t matter how many people voted for them.

• Also, if the runoff rule applied to the presidential election, Harris and Trump would have been in a runoff (Trump got 49.8% of the popular vote). So is Trump illegitimate (sure for other reasons) but he followed the election rules and he won, and just because he didn’t get 50+1 doesn’t persuade me he didn’t win fairly.

• It also edges out the grassroots candidates because of fund raising, or as Tim Stanga said last night during public input, “It gives us well funded deer in headlight candidates.” I think I know who he was referring to, but I won’t beat that dead horse, I mean deer.

The rule has only been used once since it was implemented 8 years ago and it was in the recent election. I disagree with Jordan Deffenbaugh’s testimony that runoffs help grassroots candidates, they do NOT. As a grassroots candidate you have to hit it hard and early, that is the secret, the longer the campaign the more you will be outspent.

They need to ditch this asinine rule it get us back to sanity with our elections.

I think only 3 councilors support changing it back, but it will take 6 votes to protect it from a mayoral veto, don’t see that happening.

UPDATE ON $100 MILLION IN PROFESSIONAL CONTRACTS WITHOUT RFP’S

My city hall moles have been telling me it is much worse then just leaving out the RFPs, one of the main reasons these contractors are being picked without RFPs because over 50% of them are out of state companies that have direct competition in Sioux Falls (in other words we have the local contractors to do the work). So why is hiring a local professional contractor better then out of state? First off, if something goes haywire, easier to sue. Secondly, local contractors hire local people and that profit is recirculated in the community. In other words when your taxdollars pay for a service, that money paid to the provider gets recirculated in the town. When you use an out of state contractor, that goes straight out the door. That’s why the Denty is a money vaccum. Another reason to use non-RFP out-of-state contractors is to cover up work the city may be doing that they don’t want the constituents to know about. When you put out an RFP for a repair job, people start asking questions, you know like damaged roofs on city owned buildings. The audit committee needs to do a full audit of all out-of-state, non-RFP, professional contracts that have been granted over the past 7 years.

Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 million in professional contracts w/o an RFP (request for proposal)

So amazing when you hear a councilor spout off about something NO ONE in the public was aware of. So Curtis the Blurtist decided to go off about how the council was left out of negotiations on the ambulance service, and to be quite honest, this is a bad path, and I 100% agree with him. We need to implement a municipal ambulance service. We are already doing it (SFFD) and we are getting F’ing zero ROI of assisted calls. This isn’t rocket science. You equip all the fire stations with ambulances and EMT’s. You give them union benefits and pay, and you hire a 3rd party insurance collector for revenue. It baffles me we have a contract with a company that literally relies on taxpayer funded EMT services to assist them and we get ZERO in return. Even councilor Soehl brought up that we should explore this, because the current setup with the fire department is f’d (because they are the first responders to calls, and basically hand off the patient to a taxi service. Oh, and I have witnessed it. Rode past emergency situations and the only EMT’s on scene are SFFD. And they literally prepare the patient for transfer and the ambulance shows up, and the SFFD puts the patient in the ambulance. It is a f’ing joke.)

But back to the RFP’s. Tonight while Soehl was ranting about RFP’s and other contracts he said this;

“Mayor TenHaken has approved $100 Million in NON RFP contracts since he has been mayor.”

WOW! And you waited seven years to tell us this!!!!!!???

First, some clarity. RFP’s are proposals sent out to potential professional contractors, they submit their bids and low (but qualified) usually wins. But in a weird rule in the charter (Munson was guilty of this a lot) the mayor can override any RFP and pick the contractor of their choice. I’m ok with this rule, BUT, you must first put out a bid for qualified contractors.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about city government is NOT corrupt. But when our mayor hands out millions to his buddies without constituent knowledge, there is only one word for it; CORRUPTION! and maybe a couple more like integrity and ethics?

Poops, I have always known you were corrupt, but this puts the nail in the coffin. WOW!

And Curt, thanks for the Rex Rolfing dented siding moment. And if you knew the mayor was this corrupt, what did you do about it? Chirp. Chirp.

Also, there was a city council joint meeting with the Laughing Waters County Commission. Doesn’t matter what happened, but this hot mic from a commissioner made me laugh after the commission approved the denial and awaiting the council to do the same. Well apparently the discussion irked a county commissioner as you could here her say into a hot mic, “If the council votes against this I am going to lose it.” (or something like that, it was fuzzy, but understandable.)

And folks, these are the Clems ruling us. They make Trump look like Ghandi.

Speaking of poor folks getting screwed, my favorite Steve Earle Song (it’s my life story);

Update II: The Sioux Falls City Council meeting tonight was truly disgusting. I felt like throwing up afterwards.

UPDATE II: I decided to see if the 50% rule has even been used since it was implemented in 2017. It has ONLY applied ONE time, and that was in 2024 and the runoff between Thomason and Deffenbaugh, and the runoff results were the same as the general election with Thomason the victor. There have been 4 elections since the rule was implemented and has only been triggered one time! Simply not needed. In 2018, there was a runoff between DeBoer and Soehl, but the runoff would have occurred even with the old rule of 34% in place because neither Zach or Curt got over 27% of the vote (there was 5 candidates in the initial race). It seems silly to defend a rule that has never been applied, was implemented because of political revenge, keeps grassroots candidates on the sidelines, costs us extra in elections and has NO political or constituent advantages to stand on. The councilors that VOTE against changing it back really need to get their heads examined. This is an easy one. Something wasn’t broken, change it back.

UPDATE: When this was introduced a few years ago by councilor Starr, councilor Merkouris told fellow councilors keeping the 50% rule would keep out the ‘fringe candidates’. In other words grassroots candidates with little money would’nt be able to take on the money machine. This is why Spellerberg and Sigette had no challengers. Peeps are tired of the money game. I also find this rule ironic, since if applied to the last presidential election there would have had to been a runoff between Harris and Trump (he received 49.8% of the popular vote.)

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I will say, I have been following council since Hansen was in office. I have seen some pretty weird meetings, but tonight, was sickening.

First, the public input. I think that most of them need a brain scan to see if they have dementia, secondly, they were saying crap that was counter culture to what really happens. Here is a fine example, so there is this guy that shows up to the council meetings that thinks he is philosopher, but he is mostly just a blabber, and he says to the ordinance about changing the plurality to council races BACK TO 35% that it seemed ‘politically motivated’. Hey, it got changed because of POLITICAL MOTIVES and that is why we need to change it back, so good catch, even if you don’t know what you are talking about. The change came in 2017 when the council was split and Mayor Huether broke the tie to pass this very idiotic change.

Let’s move onto the city council, they also took the side of ‘political motivation’ as to why not to change it back. Let me inform you. Councilor Rex Rolfing was vindictive, he was mean, and didn’t make any policy changes unless he was punishing his political enemies, and the move by him was purely political because of his disdain for councilor Stehly. The main reason why this should be eliminated was it wasn’t needed to begin with. If 7 people are running for a council seat and the leading candidate gets 35% of the vote, that’s good enough for me (the remaining 6 candidates would get an average of 11% of the vote, which is a THIRD of what the winner would receive.) It seems the council likes to enrich the pockets of local campaign electioneers, so the longer they can draw this out the better. The problem; You are so misinformed it is almost criminal.

It is shocking to me that the majority of the council has NO CLUE about good governance. Just protecting their behinds. In a democratic republic you are elected to represent us, not to preserve some rule that was concocted to punish political foes. Do your research BEFORE the second reading, and you will see that changing a rule that was in place for 20 years back to it’s an original intent is the best way to resolve this, and put the Rex Rolfing rule to rest once and for all.

Will the Sioux Falls City Council amend the Rex Rolfing Rule?

So this is on the agenda of the council Tuesday (Item #32);

The proposed ordinance would reduce the percentage necessary to win a city council race from more than 50 percent to 35 percent as long as the candidate receives the most votes. If the candidate with the most votes is unable to secure at least 35 percent of the vote, the top two candidates with the most votes would go to a runoff. This proposed ordinance would only impact city council elections.

I think it is turning it back to where it was originally before Rex Rolfing decided to mess with it. Not sure if the entire council supports the change since the two sponsors are the only two councilors who support a November election date. We will see.

Parades, Clowns and Clems

The city claims they are canceling the 4th of July parade due to lack of interest. That’s not what I heard. Anytime an officer works a parade, especially on a national holiday, they have to ‘volunteer’ to work overtime (they don’t pull officers from their regular shifts). I guess the volunteers came up short.

What the Heck is Huether up to?

I was talking to some city employees (management) and they said Mike has been busy ‘reaching out’ to them. He has also assembled a team for his next run. So Governor or Mayor? I’m switching my prediction to mayor. Why on earth would you be contacting city employees if you are running for governor? I also heard Merkouris is out, but no prediction on Beck.

LinClem County Commission

Some seemed surprised a Lincoln County Commissioner made anti-semitic statements then blamed the Queers for his racist remarks. No surprise to me, the LCC is made up of the biggest bunch of Clems I have seen in a long time. It amazes me that the wealthiest county in the state is ran by hillbillies.